How Zara boss Amancio Ortega makes and spends his billions: one of 2023’s top wealth gainers built a fast-fashion empire that owns Bershka and Pull&Bear – and he has an incredible property portfolio

So what do we know about the super-private retail mogul who has an estimated net worth of US$75 billion?

Amancio Ortega comes from humble beginnings

The 86-year-old was born in northwestern Spain in 1936, the son of a railroad worker and a stay-at-home mother. He started making clothes with his siblings and future wife Rosalia Mera in their home in the early 1960s. In 1975, Ortega and Mera opened the first Zara store in downtown La Coruña, Spain.

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“Zara” wasn’t actually his first choice for the store’s name. He was planning to name it Zorba after the film Zorba the Greek, but there was already a local bar with the same name. Because he’d already bought moulds of the letters Z-O-R-B-A, he made do with what he had and ended up with the name Zara.

How he became a fashion behemoth

Ten years later, in 1985, Ortega incorporated Zara into a holding company called Inditex. He and Mera separated around that time, but she remained the company’s second-largest shareholder.

Ortega owns 59 per cent of Inditex, which is now the world’s largest clothing retailer. Inditex owns a portfolio of fast-fashion brands including Zara, one of the best-known and most successful fashion brands in the world with nearly 3,000 stores in 96 countries.

It also owns Pull&Bear, a teen-focused retailer with more than 970 stores in 76 markets around Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America; and Bershka, which is the second-largest chain by store count in Inditex’s entire operation, with its sales representing 9 per cent of the total revenue for the group.

There’s also Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho, Uterqüe and Zara Home.

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His family

In August 2013, Ortega’s ex-wife Mera who had become Spain’s richest woman, died at age 69.

Mera and Ortega’s daughter, Sandra Ortega Mera, inherited the title of Spain’s richest woman after her mother’s death, controlling 5 per cent of Inditex, though she’s not involved in the company.

Ortega has been married to his second wife Flora Pérez since 2001. They share two children, including a daughter, Marta, who manages fashion merchandise at Zara.

Marta married top Spanish equestrian Sergio Álvarez Moya in February 2012, but the couple separated in 2015.

In November 2018, Marta married Carlos Torretta – then a modelling agent and son of designer Roberto Torretta – at her family’s home in Galicia, Spain.

Spanish publications called the ceremony, which reportedly included a socialite-studded guest list, the “wedding of the year”.

Since Inditex’s initial public offering in 2001, Ortega has received more than 9 billion euros, or about US$10 billion, in dividends, according to Bloomberg. Most of his cash has been reinvested in property through his company’s investment arm, Pontegadea.

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His property portfolio

In 2011, he bought the tallest skyscraper in Spain, the 157-metre Torre Picasso in Madrid, for US$536 million. In 2016, he bought another Madrid skyscraper, Cepsa Tower, for US$551 million, and invested in the Epic Residences and Hotel, a luxurious, 54-storey skyscraper in Miami.

In 2015, he paid US$370 million for an entire block of prime property in Miami Beach. He reportedly bought an office block in London’s affluent Mayfair neighbourhood that borders Hyde Park and a property on London’s prime shopping street, Oxford Street.

In the Big Apple, he also bought the ornate and landmarked cast-iron building at 490 Broadway on the corner of Broome Street for US$145 million in the same year. Ortega picked up another New York property a year later, this time a hotel at 70 Park Avenue in Murray Hill for US$67.6 million.

In 2019, Ortega went on a property spending spree, acquiring a downtown Chicago hotel for US$72.5 million, as well as a building in central Washington DC and two office buildings in Seattle that Amazon had leased, for a combined US$1.1 billion.

Ortega also owns some residential property. He and his wife live in La Coruña, Spain, near a major port of the Atlantic Ocean.

At one point, Ortega owned the Pazo de Dodro farm and estate near La Coruña. The estate was the site of his daughter Marta’s first wedding, but it’s unclear whether he still owns it.

Most recently in August, Ortega bought a 45-storey apartment tower in Chicago for a cool US$232 million. The building has 492 flats along with a fitness centre, yoga studio, dog park and pet spa.

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He’s known for being low-key

In 2012, it was reported that Ortega drove an Audi A8 luxury sedan. He also owned an US$84 million superyacht named Drizzle, but he reportedly put it up for sale in 2022. But he rarely jets off on holiday anyway. In fact, Ortega didn’t take his first holiday until 2001, after Inditex’s initial public offering.

Bloomberg reported in 2012 that he eschewed a private office to sit among the designers and fabric experts at Zara’s headquarters, while another report said he typically ate lunch with his employees in the company cafeteria every day.

Ortega sticks to a simple uniform of a shirt and trousers and doesn’t typically wear clothes from his own companies, according to Bloomberg.

In his free time, Ortega is often seen at equestrian events. He also built an equestrian centre near La Coruña, as his daughter Marta competes in show jumping.

The Amancio Ortega Foundation

Ortega founded the Amancio Ortega Foundation in 2001, a charitable organisation focused on education and social welfare. In 2017, it donated US$344 million to Spanish public hospitals to provide the latest technology in breast cancer screening and treatment.

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In 2020, Ortega donated roughly US$68 million to help combat the pandemic, including buying ventilators, face masks and Covid-19 tests for the Spanish health system.